Krogans or Salarians?

I save the Scouts because Krogan Allies and I like Hayjer a little bit more than Raeka.

And looking at everyone else talking about this decision it simply depends on personal preference.
Do you like Raeka?
Do you want to avoid those new Kett enemies?
Do you think Scouts are less important than the last original Pathfinder?
Do you like Salarians or Krogan more?

The only thing that bothered me about this is that I couldn't tell Drack to fuck off for bitching at me. Really, old man? You tell me about your scouts at the last minute and expect me to let the last original pathfinder die for them? The pathfinder who saved our butts earlier during the mission?

Drack is my favourite companion in the game by far, but this victim complex all the krogans have in regards to the salarians really pisses me off. That choice was clearly a no-brainer and had nothing to do with putting other species above the krogan.

But this goes back to shitty writing. With Shepard we used to be able to call people out on their bullshit and use some angry responses. Now it's always 'pick one of four nice/neutral responses'. It boggles my mind how they could come up with something that is actually worse than the paragon/renegade system.

This was my reasoning as well + plus Raeka saves our ass and comes off as very competent in general, so I figured having an actual, original pathfinder back would benefit the AI more in the long run.
And I was surprised that the scouts let themselves be taken alive in the first place. What the hell did the Kett use to pacify them or did they just surrender?
And how many scouts could have they captured all in all? A couple dozen tops, so it seems weird how their exaltation process as far as it was.

I like the Krogan, but their victim complex was overplayed in this instance.

I chose the Salarians cause I liked Raeka
Although I had Drack with me during that mission, so I felt REALLY bad about my decision...

Krogans for a few reasons:

Drack asked Ryder specifically to rescue them

Salarian pathfinder made a choice knowing it might not go well and she accepted her fate

Can't let the Archon have Krogan berserkers

Sick of the Krogan always being hung out to dry, especially for the Salarians

Idk about endings or in-game consequences, but since (obviously) Krogan > Salarians this was an easy choice for me.

In my first pt i saved the salarians, but i felt bad because i had drack with me. In the second i saved the krogans,but i also felt bad for raeka and the others. They've been tortured by the archon, and raeka is a very good pathfinder (although she had made her choice and was ready to sacrifice herself). Anyway i think the obvious choice is to save the salarians, wish i could've save them both...

Salarians also live only 40-ish years, while Krogans live for thousands...


Couldn't let the Salarian Pathfinder die.

The krogans.

Late to the party but I have to agree with ropedrink as he points out a few things that really bothered me from moment 1 with this mission

Please be aware that this is just my opinion and how I role-played it.

Raeka is not technically a Pathfinder when we pull her from Stasis. She is trained as a pathfinder, but does not have a SAM. She is only linked into comms and despite that SAM never seems to help her - nor is he called upon by her... or we/Ryder would have known through SAM.

She also happens to be a completely incompetent fool - thus I also wonder WTH people see in her.

Two points: Ryder is in charge here - period.
Both the Salarian and the Krogan captives are 'civilians' as is everyone else in the Initiative, despite their background

Raeka:
Disobeys Ryder and boards the Archon's ship without forewarning

She revives the Captain and 2 civilians (an engineer and a school teacher) and brings them on board to conduct an STG type search and rescue mission and later has the engineer rig an EMP for the escape; (Something SAM could have helped Ryder do). She picked the wrong people for this - including risking the loss of herself and her second by being on the same mission. And, no, I never take Cora on missions unless I'm forced to... though not liking her is part of that.

The fight in which Ryder praises Raeka's help is forced - they were not needed even a little bit, even on Insanity. Flat out poor writing/situational setting here in an effort to bolster Raeka's value. For me, I just noted that she got a civilian killed and risked her and her second 'again' in an all out firefight.

Raeka decides to try to rescue civilians on her own without telling anyone - including SAM.

She is reckless, irresponsible, makes poor decisions in the moment and she's selfish. She risks herself needlessly over a few Salarians rather than thinking of the 12000 saved, and threatened Ryder's mission by not communicating her actions... and now if Ryder opts to save her, she puts Ryder's life at risk.

We are saving 12000 Salarians. We have a chance to save an unknown number of Krogan scouts; any number of which adds the the precious few that came to Andromeda - and survived.

If Ryder is going to risk a rescue, it would be the Krogan for numbers and odds - I'd rather have a half dozen angry Krogan at my back that I just freed and armed, than six scared Salarians. Now if it was an SGT team - I'd give pause.

At the end of all this, while hearing her fathers words on hab7 echo in her mind - 'it's moments like these that tell you what a person is really made of', Ryder wonders WTH her dad ever saw in Raeka.

For me, it comes down to ruthless calcuus. There were, as I recall, about 2,500 krogan who made the trip to Andromeda. The Salarian vessel originally housed 20,0000; and I believe you wind up saving something like 12,000 to 15,000 of them. Salarians reproduce once a year with clutches of "dozen's of eggs"; and all of the eggs are very likely to hatch. Unfertilized clutches produces all males. Fertilized ones produce females. Salarians control their population by requiring breeding contracts that artificially limits the number of females by limiting the number of clutches that get fertilized, but those restrictions could easily be lifted for a time to allow the Salarian population to build more quickly in Andromeda. Mice are also relatively short-lived to many other species; but we all know how quickly they can reproduce. The Krogans in Andromeda are still affected by the genophage with only a relatively small increase to their reproduction rates due to a natural mutation that was simply allowed to develop over the 600 years it took to get to Andromeda (without being squashed by further interventions by the Salarians through projects like Mordin's. We're talking within one lifespan of a Krogan, so really the mutation is not likely to have advanced very far, even with some gene therapy.  Add in the fact that the genophage was expressly designed ot keep Krogan populations level when they were living in less harsh conditions compiled with the fact that living conditions in Andromeda are quite harsh, so they likely need that easing of the genophage numbers just to maintain their population.

Starting with a much smaller gene pool to start with, the Krogan diversity would be more adversely affected by the loss of the scouts than the Salarians would be by losing the same number of individuals. As a result, I pretty much always save the krogan scouts.

As for the loss of the Salarian pathfinder... she had already been disconnected from her SAM, so she's no more the pathfinder in that moment than any other member of Ryder's team. Saving the ark itself and saving the SAM within it, takes priority. Sure, it's an emotional blow to the Salarains losing a leader they respected; but it's not like all the other species had not already suffered the loss of their original pathfinders.